Thoughts on Technology

Friday, February 20, 2015

Last week I posted that all official Bodhi announcements are going to be posted directly on the Bodhi site from now on. Today I am here to say that while blogger was a great starting platform for me to get started writing with, I am moving on.

Friday, February 13, 2015

Since the startof the Bodhi project all news related to it has been posted on this blogger site. This is just a quick note that all official Bodhi announcements will be hosted on the Bodhi Linux blog page moving forward. This is a long overdue change as this blog here was always intended for my personal technology related things and Bodhi has become so much more than just a project of my own over the years.

Just wanted to let folks know in case they were subscribed to this page purely for Bodhi news. Moving forward it will be strictly postings about my smaller projects (like ePad) and random thoughts on other things related to technology.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

I have been working on a number of small tools for the up coming Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 release (find the latest release candidate here) and one than I am working hard to get up to snuff is our text editor ePad. Previous versions of Bodhi Linux has always included the GTK text editor Leafpad by default so my initial release of ePad has the goal of simply covering the same features as Leafpad at the bare minimum.

As of today my ePad source is nearing a 1.0.0 release and the goal of this post is to let folks outside of Bodhi know it exists and that it is ready for them to give it a try. ePad in its current form supports most all of the features you would expect from a text editor: Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, Find, Replace, and displaying Line Numbers. On top of these it also supports opening multiple files in the same application window.

You can find the ePad source on GitHub here and you can report issues you encounter on the GitHub issue tracker here. Please note that ePad requires:

I have been working on a number of small applications using Elementary. While building these applications I found myself reusing a few of the same gadgets in different places, so I had the idea others might find some of them useful as well.

Thus elmextensions was born. You can find the latest source code for elmextensions on GitHub here. As of this post there are currently four different elementary objects in elmextensions:

SortedList

This first object is similar to a "spreedsheet" or "tree" type widget. It creates a list of objects that are sortable by clicking on the header for a given column. The elements in the widget can be any Elementary object.

EmbeddedTerminal

This widget is a very basic terminal. Accepts text input/out and runs the command entered in the input line when execute is pressed. More complex things such as ncurses applications will not work.

AboutWindow

Creates a standardized information window for your application that is easy to fill in with your own information.

FileSelector

Now I am sure some people will be slightly confused because there already exists a file selector widget in elementary. The problem is that the default file selector is minimal by design and does not have features such as displaying Bookmarks, sorting the data, or displaying file size. This widget does all of these things.

There are examples of how to utilize each of these widgets in the top level of the GitHub repo. If you have any questions about how to utilize these widgets feel free to open a thread in the elementary section of the Bodhi forums. If you encounter any issues please open a bug report on GitHub.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

If you follow me on GitHub then you likely noticed I have added a few projects in the last few days. One of these projects has been on my TODO list for awhile - cleaning up the old remastersys script I have always used to create the Bodhi Linux ISO images for the last few years. Today I am pleased to announce you can find my fork of remastersys dubbed "BodhiBuider" on GitHub here.

The couple of notable changes I have made so far are:

XZ compression to decrease image size

Starting support for UEFI booting

Default Bodhi branding

If you take the time to peruse the code and have any suggestions for improvement please feel free to share.

Monday, January 19, 2015

Just over four months ago I announced that I was stepping down from the active role I had maintained in the Bodhi Linux project since it started a little over four years ago. Today I am happy to share that I am returning in my full capacity as project manager/lead developer and I come bearing gifts!

Over the past couple of weeks I have re-familiarized myself with what has been going on in the land of Enlightenment and cleaning up the Bodhi build scripts (which you can find on my GitHub). Today I am pleased to share what I have been referring to as a "Reloaded" version of work on this third major release. To cut right to the chase I would like to share download links for the "Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 RC2 Reloaded" release.

The "Legacy" ISO image is a special disc tailored for older hardware. It contains the same core software as the 32/64bit releases with the following exceptions:

Non-PAE Linux Kernel 3.2 with i486 support

Enlightenment 17.6 Desktop

Screenshots

Unlike previous Bodhi Linux releases, the 3.0.0 release will have a more uniform look, instead of requiring the user to choose what the system looks like when it first starts up. This makes setup easier for new users, while Enlightenment still allows power users the configuration options they crave.

Live Image Splash

Boot Splash

Login Screen

Default Desktop

Applications

Wrapping Up

While I am not calling this a stable release, there is a good chance these images strongly resemble what our stable release will look like when it comes out next month.

You can get support installing/using Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 RC2 Reloaded in the Bodhi Linux 3 section of our user forums. I would ask that you please do not post requests for support on this blog post as the comments section here is not designed for troubleshooting.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Late last year an update to the Battle.net game launcher exposed a bug in in the Mesa library. This caused the launcher to look something like this while running under Wine on Ubuntu 14.04 with some graphics cards:

You can find the opened and closed bug report here. Sadly this patch has yet to make its way into the default Ubuntu 14.04 repositories (and who knows if it ever will) so to resolve the issue you need to update your Mesa packages. You can do this via the Xorg Edgers PPA with the following commands:

You might need to restart your X server for the changes to take effect. This fix should work with all Wine variants such as Play on Linux and Crossover. If you are using a non-Ubuntu based distro, you will want to install Mesa version 10.4 or newer. Enjoy your gaming!

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About Me

My name is Jeff Hoogland and you've landed on one of my Google pages. I currently work as adjunct faculty teaching mathematics at ITT Technical Institute in Springfield IL. I am a free software advocate and part time code jockey. You can learn more about me from my personal website.

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Thoughts on Technology is a collection of my own original writings about computers, hardware, software, and all forms of technology in the world around us today. I ask that you please do not repost my works without permission, but if you wish to please feel free to link back to my website here.

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